"It \ '_:. i '.' I j {- ì \ % :, 4i .\. t.' 172 BOOKS T HE common reader will put up with absolutely anything, but how like getting a stock split or finding a four-leaf clover it is to read a book by a writer who has man- aged to separate the material that is his from everybody else's, whose style is an approximation of his own manner of speaking, and who with some courage lays his cards on the table. "The Edge of Day," by Laurie Lee (Morrow), meets all three of these requIrements, and is beautiful besides, as one wou] d expect the autobiography of a poet to be- beautiful, rich, full of stories, full of the humor that fountains from unsuppressed human beings, full of intelligence and point, full of damn near everything. I have a fondness for first sentences, and the first sentences of thIS book are "I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began. The June grass, amongst which I stood, was taller than I was, and I wept. I had never been so close to grass before. " He was rescued by his three big sisters, who came scrambling and calling up the steep, rough bank and, partIng the long grass, found him. "There, there, it's .all right, don't you wall any- more," they said. "Come down 'orne and we'll stuff you wIth currants." It was the summer of the last year of the First World War, and 'orne turned out to be "a cot- tage that stood in a half- acre of garden on a steep bank above a lake; a cot- tage with three floors and a cellar an d a treasure in the walls, with a pump and apple trees, syrInga and strawberries, rooks in the chimneys, frogs in the cellar, mushrooms on the ceiling, and all for three and SIxpence a week. " Shortly before this, his father, "a knowing, brisk, evasive man, the son and the grandson of sailors," had decamped, leaving Bright as a Windblown Lark his mother to bring up their four young children and four more by hIs first marriage-on what It would be an ex- aggeration to call a shoestring. But at least he didn't abandon them entirely; he sent them a few pounds a year, and though they were always hungry, they never quite starved, for the simple rea- son that they had neighbors. "See if Granny Trill's got a screw of tea-only ask her nicely, mind," his mother would say. Or "Run up to Miss Turk and try and borrow half-crown; I didn't know I'd got so low." And the child spoken to would say, "Ask our Jack, our Mother! I borrowed the bacon. It's blummin' -well his turn now." "Our Mother" is larger than life- size. She was descended from a long line of Cotswold farmers, and the village schoolmaster, finding that she had a good mind, lent her books and took con- siderable pains with her, until her mother fell sIck and she was needed at home and her father put a stop to her education At seventeen, wearIng her \ \".. Â " AI.. ' I , '\ :,', . < \ I f I , ....., 8: '- '- - ' * - - - . ,- ..:';, -... t ' #, > --... \ \ " . f ,a\. .". æ .; \J" . ..\ . . \ ::.,., >" , ' H t ';i to. -.. . ,, - J ) t 4IfI/IIiIII 1': _. ... j, " %<.. $ ^. .. -Sf" <-.): ....' best straw hat and carrying a rope-tied box, she went into domestic service and worked as a scullery maid, household maid, nursemaid, and parlormaid in the houses of the gentry-an experience that haunted her, because she saw luxu- nes and refinements she could never for- get and to which, her son says, she in some ways naturally belonged. "Real gentry wouldn't hear of It," she would tell the chIldren. "The gentry always do it like this" -with the result that they, too, were haunted by what she passed down to them She had been more than pretty, and she was still a strong, healthy, vivid, impulsive woman She was also extravagant and a dreadful manager. The rent... was only three shillings sixpence a week but we were often six months behind. There would be no meat at all from Monday to Saturday, then on Sunday a fabulous goose; no coal or new clothes for the whole of the winter, then she'd take us all to the theatre; Jack, with no boots, would be expensively photo- graphed; a new bedroom suite would ar- rive; then we'd all be insured for thou- :. ".c- -, f ...... ..-::, .Yo · - ) [ r' .. \ .... - -#' , "- '" .... -=-.. J -. - = ---. - ,../ .: . -: ....",....# . .:;,.:. .,., "Everybody)s oncerned about the little fellow, nobody gives a damn about me! ))